Communication

• As a team, the production line works VERY well together. They all know each other very well and know how to work well together. Besides communicating with each other about who is working on what operation at what time, they communicate very effectively within the group. Problems in communication mainly exist between the production line and the rest of the organization. The team also has a lot of trust for each other as exemplified by their passiveness in times of urgency to meet quotas or the broken glass incident on page 15.

• It is not clear WHO is working on WHAT at any given moment o On page 5, it notes “It was not uncommon for several team members, each at different times, and occasionally at the same time, to perform the same operations.”
• There is a loss of efficiency in this process. It IS a good thing that each worker has the ability to do nearly any other operation. This should be promoted and supported.
• Problem: Workers might be working on the same operation at the same time therefore losing time that could be spent doing something else. Look at page 13. There is a conversation between the casewriter and Betty. Betty explains that she cannot fit a lid to a container because the machine shop did not match the sizes. She not only decides to just go work another job, but she has NO IDEA who machined the lids and containers in the machine shop because jobs are interchangeable. If she knew who did it, she could go straight to the person and work things out
• Solution: It needs to be made clear to the rest of the team what each member is working on at the moment. Workers should stick to their specialties more than just 50% of the time (it says they stick to their specialty for about 50% of their work on page 5) and only stray from this when something else needs to be done. • There is confusion among the production